Trust the Timing

On the 18-hour flight from Vancouver to Bangkok, I cried twice.

When I bought that ticket four months earlier, I just wanted a short break — a trip home to Thailand, a pause from work, maybe a quiet reset.

None of us in my family knew what was coming.

Me at Whytecliff Park, West Vancouver

Two months later, the call came: my father had been diagnosed with stage 2 cancer.

It was still early, the doctor said. Surgery could remove it. We tried not to worry too much.

But then came the second blow — his heart.

His coronary arteries weren’t strong enough. The cancer surgery had to be postponed. And when doctors talk about heart disease, they often tell you the worst-case scenarios, just in case.

That’s when my mom called, her voice breaking over the phone.

“Sell everything,” she said. “Move back.”

What was supposed to be a six-week trip suddenly felt like a one-way flight.

And I only found out two weeks before departure.

I packed my apartment with the strange stillness that comes when life rearranges faster than your emotions can keep up — confused, scared, and unsure what I was walking toward. The uncertainty sat heavy. I told a friend, “If I don’t come back, just sell everything. And the truth was, that if felt more like a when.

I cried twice on the flight — once over the ocean, once while everyone else was asleep.

It wasn’t sadness exactly; it was the weight of everything uncertain, too heavy to carry silently. Everything I’d built, every plan I thought I had — all of it felt up in the air.

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When the plane landed at 9 a.m.,

I went straight home, dropped my luggage, took a quick shower, and headed to the hospital.

My father’s heart surgery was scheduled that very afternoon.

And there I was, hugging him before the nurses wheeled him into the operating room.

We hadn’t seen each other in over four years.

For six hours, my family and I waited outside the ICU.

When the doctors finally brought him out — unconscious, covered in tubes, the steady rhythm of the monitor echoing through the hall.

My mom could barely stand when she saw him.

My siblings and I held her tight, keeping her from falling apart.

And in that moment — the quiet, the beeping machines, the sterile smell of antiseptic — something inside me settled.

For the first time in months, I stopped resisting what was happening.

All the chaos suddenly made sense.

Later, when I looked back, I began to notice the pattern.

The countless hours I’d spent watching YouTube videos about mental health and communication — they helped me calm my mom when she needed it most.

The months I’d learned to cook balanced meals and count micronutrients — now I could prepare healthy, delicious food for my dad when his diet became strict.

The years I’d spent building my own website, consulting remotely, pushing through uncertainty — now I could work beside my family instead of miles away.

Every dot connected backward.

At the time, they were just choices — small ones, made for reasons that felt personal and immediate. But standing in that hallway, I saw what they’d really been preparing me for.

It was right that I’d bought that ticket four months earlier.

Right that I’d learned those skills.

Right that I’d made those choices without knowing why.

And somehow it landed me exactly where I was supposed to be, at exactly the right hour.

Now, a month later, I’m still in Thailand.

My father is recovering, preparing for his next surgery.

I’m juggling between family and my own journey toward the career I’ve dreamed of.

There’s still uncertainty — but this time, I’m not afraid of it.

Steve Jobs once said:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward… You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

But standing there in that hospital hallway, I finally understood what he meant.

Sometimes, life doesn’t give you a clear map — it gives you dots. Choices that seem small or even meaningless at the time. And when the moment comes, those dots reveal what they were preparing you for all along.

And if I keep choosing what feels right, keep doing my best — somehow, everything connects.

There’s still uncertainty, but it doesn’t scare me anymore.

And maybe that’s what trust really means — not believing everything will be easy, but believing that, one day, you’ll understand why it unfolded this way.

Because timing has its own logic...